Posted
by
EditorDavid
on Saturday February 25, 2017 @04:34PM
from the killed-in-Kansas dept.

lxw56 writes:
Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.

Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist, alchohol fucks everyone up, just in different ways, none good and many lethal. Now if only dude had been stoned, sure he could likely have shot himself whilst stoned trying to clean his second favourite toy but at least he would not have shot someone else. Guns and alchohol do not mix https://psychcentral.com/news/... [psychcentral.com]. That is all that this story is about, once drunk, all logic and reason is gone to be replaced by alcohol fuelled depression and stupidity.

No, but getting drunk and shooting a brown person while yelling "get out of my country" is racist, drunk or not. Being drunk doesn't make it magically not racist, much like punching someone while drunk droesn't magically become "not assault" just because you're drunk.

Geographically, yes. However Russians are also "Asian" (and depending on the textbook occasionally Europe and Asia aren't even referred to as separate continents anymore - just "Eurasia" since it's all really the same landmass).

While Indians may be from Asia, they are not Mongoloid which is what most people think of when they say "Asian".

I work for Garmin at a different location and information I got from a co-worker, who used to be based in Olathe, was that the shooter drove to another bar where he told the staff he was in hiding from police. The staff there then called police who arrested him.

I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.

I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post. I am genuinely saddened to hear of the death of a co-worker and such a needless death is so hard to understand. I have no idea how to fix the gun problem in the USA, if it was easy it would have been done already. Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.

They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.

Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:

1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.

That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment. The Founding Fathers used their own experiences to craft a document which (was supposed to) enshrined rights to people while limiting that of the government. However, as James Madison pointed out, there has been more abridgement of freedoms of the people by the silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations (paraphrased).

The second reason for the amendment, and one the NRA absolutely refuses to recognize, is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia. Unlike today, the Founding Fathers envisioned a small standing army, if at all, with the militia doing the brunt of the work to slow or repel foreign invaders or put down rebellion, as George Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion.

Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.

The original amendment, as proposed by James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, was:

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."

You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not.

This is why gun control is such a contentious issue. The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, says citizens are allowed to own firearms. Where the argument comes in is where to draw the line on a) who can own a gun (as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot) and b) what restrictions on gun ownership (type of weapon, amount of bullets, etc). As you have seen, some believe there should be no restrictions and others say there should be plenty of restrictions or even no ownership at all.

They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.

Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:

1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.

That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.

Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.

Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.

They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.

Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:

1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.

That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.

Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.

Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.

This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?

Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.

I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact.... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.

So you're presenting an... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.

More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...

I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.

...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing

Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.

I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.

Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.

But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.

What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.

I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some pe

I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.

But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?

The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.

Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nu

Not surprised at the huge negative response. Most of the responses back my statement "They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing". My point is if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] you will see you are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than places like New Zealand. Some of you claim it is need to defend your democracy but there is nothing wrong with democracy here. We rise up and protest as needed and if the worst came I am sure people could overthrow an unjust

Actually there is a "correct" side, the side that says my coworker would not be dead if he meet the same type mentally deranged guy in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe. If that had happened here my coworker would be in the office the next day with a broken nose and the other guy would be in court on an assault charge.

There's an even more correct side -- the side that goes along with the overwhelming amount of research (not to mention common sense) that suggests more guns = more gun accidents (and of course, more gun violence.)

The pro-shooter types will always love to drag out an anecdote of some woman about to be raped and her only solution apparently is to shoot the guy dead (and of course its usually a hypothetical story since few people actually know of any such cases, though I'm sure you could find one or two if you try hard enough. Even then, proving that there were no other options is not always straightforward.

Unfortunately we now live in a world where feelings matter more than facts not only in people's minds but in the office of the leader of the "free" world, so trying to convince anyone that their rare case anecdote is less useful on a large scale than actual scientific research requires a level of patience and eloquence few people can master.

But whatever.. I put up a post on/. once in a while hoping to convince someone somewhere that guns are actually dangerous but in the grand scheme of things I'm just a scrub behind a screen I don't expect that I'll be the one to change the world.

There's a (IMHO) simple reason for the divide on gun control in the U.S. The issue mostly breaks down into urban (pro gun-control) vs rural (anti gun-control). And if you analyze it that way, I think the reason is obvious: Urban areas have faster police response times. If you live in a city, it makes sense to just call someone else with a gun (the police) and wait for them to arrive if a crime is in progress.

But in rural areas, waiting for police can often get you killed. So people there prefer to ha

Highlighted a key part for you. Australia even before the gun ban didn't have a culture of openly carrying guns in the street. We didn't have a trigger happy culture. We didn't get into an argument and shoot people. The gun buyback and ban was never intended to have anything remotely to do with the murder rate. It solved one problem and one problem only: Mass killings.

America on the other hand,... well two of my colleagues from our Texas office got into a heated discussion on an engineering problem and ended up pulling guns on each other. The situation was de-escalated though. In the kind of culture where you reach for your piece instead of just punching a man in the face like they deserve, a gun ban may have a very different outcome.

We don't know because as you so rightly pointed out we only have data from particular cultures, very different ones to the "omg the mentally unstable need a right to bear arms too" culture.

The buyback scheme was 2003, and 1996, there is certainly a drop there. You conveniently mention 1996, where there were still a lot of gun, but not 2003 the second buyback. I wonder why. Maybe because that woulds not support your contention I guess. Murder rate 2001- 2003:310 , 318, 302. 2004 and following years : 263,259, 280, 255,263. What other stuff happened in 2003 beside the buyback ? Nothing.

Thank you for your reasoned response. Rifles are common here and not to hard to get but you never see then in the city, only on farms, at the homes of hunters and out the bush. I would image it possible to get a hand gun but I'm 54 and in my entire life I have never seen one here outside of a gun shop or on the police at Auckland International Airport (rare even there).

Yes, knives etc are an issue in bar fights etc but are a magnitude less dangerous and I think your average bouncer would consider take on such a person.

I'm in Britain, and guns here are not readily available. You can get them as a criminal, yes, but only if you have the right connections - it's not something that every street thug can obtain. That's why our petty street thugs mostly carry knives.

Given recent events in Europe, with so many people getting killed by being run over and stabbed, I don't think Europeans have any standing to be smug about their gun laws.

We had exactly two cases in Europe where a terroristic attack was performed with a truck, and at least in one case, it was gun related (the Berlin attack), where the suspect captured the truck at gunpoint. At both occasions, the total number of people killed in car accidents in Europe at the same day is about the same range (the average number of traffic deaths per day is about 70 in the E.U.). Stabbings happen, but most of them are between family members and acquaintances (as most homicides are in general)

Just about every other developed country in the world disagrees. The few that have a similar (well, within a 2-3x factor, the US is just that much of an outlier) level of gun ownership (like Switzerland) do it in a way so incredibly different it may as well be another concept entirely.

It just so happens that the rest of world is also doing fine without all those guns.

There's no amount of massaging of the statistics that will change the fact the US gets waaaaay more gun deaths per capita than any other Western country. You're up there with Uruguay and Panama. That, alone, is proof enough that the bandwagon fallacy doesn't apply.

Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.

There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.

"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.

your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.

You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.

After 2016, I would've thought it would've been obvious to everyone that guns weren't the problem. If you take away guns, the crazies will just resort to other methods to kill people (like trucks - the fantasy that they'd use knives is only true for crimes of passion, but not for deliberate killings like this one). Heck, the driver of the truck in Nice had a gun, and opted to use the truck instead.

"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"

Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.

Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.

"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"

Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.

Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.

It's kind of amusing how the same folks who argue that without a gun people would still be able to kill other people without too much trouble are the same people who interpret the Second Amendment's Right to Bear Arms as meaning...... Guns!
Next guy who tells me, "Firearms in the hands of the citizenry are the way to assure that governments do not assume tyrannical power, therefore the Second Amendment" or similar gets a dose of "Guns are not the only way to kill a person, if somebody wants to kill gover

I did. You pointed to a bunch of tools that have different primary uses then killing people and that are used at rates drastically lower than guns to intentionally kill people and then you point to a minor side use to guns as if all that stuff is the same. I thought maybe you didnt articulate your point properly but it seems like you just made a poor point now.

As stated in the post you replied to, guns are far more efficient at killing people then anything you listed because that is a guns primary purpose a

The shooter probably saw the jobs he was qualified for moved to 3rd world nations and 3rd world citizens moved into his hometown to take jobs from his countrymen - what's the correct response? All the average man can do is vote or lash out - I agree it's likely this fellow did both.

Why is it that people see gun control as smart but immigration control as stupid? They're both instances of dealing with symptoms instead of causes.

Unfortunately, 'terrorism' is now a code word for Jihad, and the term has elbowed out all other terror acts committed by non-Muslims. If everybody would use the j word to describe terrorism done by the allahu-akbar screaming crowd, and the t word for its doing by anyone else, that would clear things up a lot

He clearly considers himself to be part of the American political group that hates/fears Islam. (Also part of the group who confuses all brown people with Middle Easterners, too, but that's not a political group.)

Was there any implication that this kind of violence would be repeated unless some public policy changed?

You don't have to be seeking a policy change to be seeking a political aim. Wanting to eject Muslims from the US is a political aim, and doing it by making them afraid they'll be shot is just as good as governmental action.

why do you guys bother keeping this comment section running, when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet? okay, sure, there are communities specifically geared towards right-wing fascism and racism that are probably worse, but this site is supposed to be about, you know, tech news and stuff. but you guys have let it erode into something gross that almost nobody other than despicable morons want to participate in. i remember years ago when articles would have hundreds of interesting and insightful comments, with actual experts weighing in with well thought out reactions. those people are all gone, and with very good reason. are you glad they're gone? do you miss them? do you miss relevancy?

i doubt you are proud of providing a forum dominated by some of the worst elements of humanity. so that's why i'm asking why you continue to do so.

If you ignore the political stories that shouldn't be on this site anyway you'll find a lot of the comments sections are still quite good. I'm a little surprised you claim the comments are geared towards the right though, if anything the overall bias seems to be towards the left.

I don't think Slashdot recognizes the damage they are doing to their brand by chasing the lowest common denominator. They keep publishing on the same provocative subjects. That drives a spike in readership but it pushes away people who are more sophisticated. Thoughtless people push up thoughtless comments. And Slashdot needs to start trimming their stories. Really, we don't need another story on autonomous vehicles. They also need to stop publishing stories on the weekend. The rating system just does not

Not really, no./. used to be mostly liberal/libertarian with a large slice of middle-of-the-road. Rightwing nutjobs, facists, and Nazis-in-all-but-name used to be downmodded into oblivion within minutes of posting.

Then Gamergate happened.

Within a few months,/. culture was almost completely inverted - and the rightwing nutjobs, facists, and Nazis-in-all-but-name gained ascendance. Things have only gotten worse since then.

when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet

So he's clearly new here. We get far fewer GNAA posts here today than the early days. The political stories that don't belong here are, in fact, clickbait to broaden the appeal of/. beyond "news for nerds", since "news for nerds" is what's makes it the least interesting community for more people out there.

I work for Garmin in New Zealand and have been to Olathe a few times. Garmin has great inclusive culture to it and I am genuinely saddened to hear of Srinivas' death.

I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.

It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.

My mind can not comprehend how the shooter could feel justified in taking a life even if he really thought immigrant were taking local jobs. These kind of people need to stop blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and take a good hard look at themselves.

As an immigrant working in a foreign country I also have been the target of such a comment once. What people don't realise is that jobs aren't a fixed unit in a multi-national company. I didn't take a local job, I bought a new job into the country. I was offered employment and then given the choice of where to work. Like many others at my company they are moved around the world for various engineering assignments in a way to develop employees and expand their knowledge.

As far as I can tell out of the 20% (my estimate) of non nationals that work at my current office, not a single one took a "local" job despite being on a local contract.

Now that's just one example, but hopefully it's an example that shows that all to often people take a very simple and very narrow minded view to a very complex process.

I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.

It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.

The US like Australia is a country of immigrants, and I support immigrants for reasons that are separate from my economic advantage. But I do think that immigrants take away jobs from Americans, particularly in technology.

Employment is cyclical. Up to about the 1980s, especially in technology, when there was an abundance of employees, employers used to hire the most qualified (often overqualified) worker. So a food company would hire a PhD to work in their chemistry labs. When there was a shortage of workers, they would hire lower-qualified workers. So the company would hire a technician with a college degree in chemistry, or even a smart high school graduate, and train him on the job. And they usually worked out pretty well. This was particularly striking during the World War II, when the US had the best job market we've seen in living memory.

Long after WWII, American corporations had training programs where they hired less skilled workers and trained them on the job. When corporations bought the first mainframe computers, they would often hire smart college graduates with degrees in mathematics or related field, or sometimes in unrelated fields, and train them on the job. For example, when New York City bought its first computers, they hired philosophy majors from City College, and trained them in programming, according to programmers I've talked to. Sometimes they just hired liberal arts graduates who seemed to have an affinity for math and logic. American corporations believed that training was the way to be profitable in the long run. (They also gladly paid taxes for public education to train their workers.)

By the 1990s, this had fallen out of favor. They abandoned the idea of training people on the job. They demanded specialized skills and workers who could "start immediately." We've seen complaints on Slashdot of how companies were looking not for a programmer, but for a programmer with 5 years of experience in software XYZ.

In my observation, there seemed to be two reasons for this. First, a lot of people were trained in the military, particularly the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Second, there were a lot of trained immigrants coming into the country, particularly Soviet immigrants who got an excellent education, often with advanced degrees (for example, Sergei Brin's parents).

If you believe that we have a free market, then you have to believe that employees will have more opportunities when unemployment is low and they are in greater demand (and vice versa). When employees are hard to get, employers will train less skilled workers. When they're easy to get, employers will demand PhDs.

It seems, from intuition and observation, that flooding the employment market with skilled workers will discourage employers from hiring and training less skilled workers. It seems that if American employers couldn't have gotten skilled workers from the Soviet Union, China, India, and elsewhere, they would have been forced to hire Americans and train them. And while immigrant workers

Pardon me, but I wasn't born yesterday. When an entire motive is determined by the statement of one unnamed witness, and it just so happens to be a rare validation of a major unsubstantiated trend narrative, I am suspicious. I'll be waiting a few weeks to let this story play out before I believe it.

No, that is not why they come here. They are brought here, to suppress your wages, by wealthy Americans of every race, gender, religion and orientation that has the means to do so. They are given a temporary license to stay, provided they remain cheap, then they get cast back to where they came from (or get labelled enemy of the state, evidently).

This is what is being lost beneath the racism, the Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. are not your enemies, they're just people trying to make a buck. Your enemies are Americans.

You should start by looking in the mirror and see how the election of Obama moved the overton window enough to make trump possible. Alas such honest reflection from the left is why the democrats are as decimated as they are.

Well, that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that black people do a lot more murder on a per capita basis. As it turns out, the chances of getting killed by a white guy are less for a black person than the reverse. Which is indicative of the overall murder rate in the black community being several times (something like 5+ times) what it is amongst whites.

Although the math doesn't require an absolute population value, it's a bit easier to reason about it if one is used, so I'll round the population of the country to 300 million.

If whites are 70% of this population and 500 whites per year are murdered by blacks, then the white population is 210 million, and the rate of whites murdered by blacks is 500 per 210 million -- about 2.4 whites per million are murdered each year by blacks.

If blacks are 13% of this population, and 200 blacks per year are murdered by whites, then the black population is 39 million, and the rate of blacks murdered by whites is 200 per 39 million -- about 5.1 blacks per million are murdered each year by whites.

Ergo, as I said, these numbers, if believed, show that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.

Well, only approximately, since 5.1 is not exactly twice 2.4, but that wasn't your quibble now, was it?

As other commenters have pointed out, that statement is fairly meaningless without further context, but I'm not the one who posted the context-free numbers. All I did is point out one conclusion from them. Another conclusion, of course, is the one probably intended by the original poster, e.g. that on average, black people commit more interracial murders than white people, but that conclusion likewise requires additional context before you could consider it to be actionable data.

Here's one piece of context for you -- "on average" has its own problems. As Dylan Roof illustrates, a single white guy easily supplied 4.5% of the carnage in that white-on-black number.

I would guess that the same people concerned about this event are also largely the same people advocating for stricter gun controls. So it would seem that they are indeed concerned about those other shootings.

What is more interesting is that Trump is pushing his travel ban while far more people are killed by fellow Americans using guns than are killed by terrorists. Over 150,000 gun related homicides since 2001 vs 3,046 killed by terrorists. While 3,046 is indeed a large number, 2,996 of those happened on 9/11. None of those perpetrators were from the seven countries on Trump's list. The bulk of them were from Saudi Arabia, where Trump has significant business interests.

All that being said, I don't think gun control is THE answer to gun related homicides. There are deeper problems that need to be addressed. A travel ban is an order of magnitude worse solution to a much smaller problem. It serves to aggravate anti-US sentiment and makes recruiting people of any nationality an even easier task for terrorists. It makes enemies out of people who might otherwise be allies and promotes an environment where hatred and fear of "outsiders" is encouraged.

That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked.

Trump may be aggravating it, but this isn't new. Some idiot attacked Sikhs a few years ago because he thought their turbans meant they were Muslims.

"That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked."

Ok. much more serious response to your post this time. The guy was a nut or a broken nut. Blaming Trump is like Blaming Obama for the Texas nut who flew his plane in to a building more than a few years ago. And I recall on this very board everyone speculati

Nuts don't grow in a vacuum. I have no idea how much (if any) impact Trump had on this guy. I would guess though that he had plenty of contact with like minded people who at least talked about wanting to do this kind of thing. Trump's policies and penchant for "alternative" facts helps fuel the misguided hatred that feeds this stuff.

Entire societies have been complicit in unspeakable crimes including genocide. Where they nuts? No. They were surrounded by people and institutions that legitimized that kind of thinking. I don't believe Trump even knows how dangerous he his. It was never so important before to know the facts. It was never so important to be careful about what one says. He's not qualified either in experience or temperament for this job.

The difference is, Obama didn't spend years going on TV and convincing Muslims that Americans are bad hombres who are out to get them around every streetcorner. Trump has spent the last year and a half on TV espousing exactly that kind of FUD about people with brown skin. Trump's fearmongering rhetoric comes with a price, and innocent people are paying it.

No, because Obama was always condemned the extremism that led to those attacks, and condemned the acts themselves after they happened.

Trump, on the other hand, was completely silent the last time a right wing terrorist killed people, and has done basically nothing to speak up against the extremists in his base. Even getting him to disavow the KKK or condemn anti-Semitism is like getting a toddler to eat vegetables.

There is absolutely no double standard in holding Trump accountable for this.

Silly excuses for killing other humans. For the record, contrary to what you may have heard from Fox News, Obama did not touch the H1B visas. Under section 214(g)(1)(A)(vii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1989, only 65,000 H1B visas may be allocated each fiscal year, and that has remained so. The only thing Obama did and his powers were very limited as the President, is that he allowed spouses of H1Bs called H4 visa holders to work legally, and he allowed H1Bs who were already waiting for green cards to change jobs without losing their position in the green card queue, which makes H1Bs less like bonded labor and makes the employment market fair for all.

Everybody is racist. At least to some degree, if you think you're colour-blind or your biases are grounded in dispassionate statistics then you're delusional.

Now, do Trump supporters show more racial biases than other people? Yes. Whether you call them "racist" is just a question of where you draw the line on using that particular label.

that is yet more Fake News

You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

In the face of a shooting why are you trying to make people hate others more, not less?

We're trying to wake people up to the danger posed by the rhetoric that Trump is pumping out, and he's not just creating threats on the right, if I were an Al-Queda or ISIS recruiter right now I'd be over the moon.

Are you always so understanding when seeking the root cause when a Muslim does something terroristy?

After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension

Yeah! What was Obama thinking Presidenting while black??

and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.

I don't think Trump drinks.

Mathews apologized to the family's in her statement, calling Purinton's actions "senseless." She said he had a drinking problem that became worse since his father passed away in October 2015, and he'd been trying to get assistance from the VA.

The families of home-grown Muslim terrorists tend to be very apologetic and horrified by the actions of their relatives, do you also bold their family's response when trying to humanize the perpetrator?

Murder an innocent man because you think he's middle-eastern? Clearly the fault of the VA,

It is because he couldn't get the treatment he needed. Without that he became unhinged.

I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe that if peel cannot get the help they need society is partly to blame. You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to bla

You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way.

And yet, from your previous post, you "apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Obama." I quote:

What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA [wibw.com]. After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.

Look -- I feel like I have to say this on the internet every other day now, but events can have multiple causes. They certainly always have various factors that have to be in place for them to come to pass.

I frankly don't know this man. I haven't researched his story in detail. And I certainly don't feel that *I* have any business pontificating on the internet about what "triggered" this ev

Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.

About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.

Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.

About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.

There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.

Well yes, but using extremes can often lead to a sort of moral relativism where everybody is equally bad even though one is a fringe movement and the other a mainstream sentiment. I'm sure there were a few black supremacists, but nothing like the KKK. I'm sure some Jews hated the Nazis, but nothing like the Holocaust. I don't know if it's been listed as a fallacy but the appeal to indifference certainly should be, like they were probably just as bad as us. No, they probably weren't.

Assuming 400 years sticks, most of my ancestors arrived in North America just shy of 300 ago, from France, England, and Ireland. I'm sure I'm not the only one of "mixed" descent. Which branch represents the "native" homeland that we're supposed to go back to?